


I'm Still Here

by CatKing_Catkin



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Background Mollymauk Tealeaf, Beauregard & Mollymauk Tealeaf Friendship, Bittersweet, Bittersweet Ending, Canonical Character Death, Crying, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fictional Religion & Theology, Five Stages of Grief, Future Fic, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Headcanon, Hurt Beauregard (Critical Role), Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Seriously So Much Talking, Spans multiple episodes, Talking, Therapy, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, post episode 26
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-06 11:09:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17344214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: A journey of grief, in three acts.(Or, Beau finds out that, when you care about people, grieving their loss is a long and messy thing that doesn't allow for any shortcuts.Fortunately, she also finds that when you care about people, the ones you're able to hold on to are there to help you through the rough patches.)





	1. No One Lives Forever

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been trying to get written since, oh, about June 2018. Or it might be more accurate to say that these three fics have been trying to get written since then.
> 
> I decided it was finally time to let it, especially since I was finally able to think of a framing device to tie them all together.

The bag was so very heavy in her hands.

Fifty platinum.

“I keep thinking,” said Beau, with the solemnity that only the truly drunk could muster. “That I should be more upset about this.”

Caleb, who had to be at least as drunk as Beau if not more, didn’t look up from his book. “About what?”

Beau lifted the bag up just enough to let it fall onto the table with a noticeable _thunk_ and a rattle. Caleb winced, pressing his fingers to his temple for a moment. She probably shouldn’t have felt as gratified as she did at that but fuck it, everyone else was asleep except the two of them and she wanted to know that he felt at least as raw and wrecked as she did inside.

“He gave us this,” she said, unable to tear her gaze away from it. “For our _loss_. For our _troubles_. Like that makes it okay.”

Caleb _sighed_ , long and tired. With the same drunken solemnity, he closed his book and set it beside the bag of blood money.

“Would you rather he have given us nothing?”

Beau shrugged. “I think, uh, I think I should have thought that way. I think that would have been the right thing to think. But do you know what I thought instead?”

“ _Was?_ ”

“‘Molly’s not worth that much.’” She’d known how disgusting the words sounded in her head. It felt only slightly better to have them out and said. Beau dragged a hand down her face, making a frustrated noise. “I mean, fuck, none of us are worth that much.”

Caleb nodded slowly. He was also staring at the bag as if it held the secrets of the universe. “That is true enough. My parents, ah, they would have been fortunate to make fifty gold in their entire lives.”

“And Molly said that, what, one job with us earned him as much as the whole circus could pull in two years?”

 _“Ja._ He did.”

“Fuck. He…he really liked doing this shit with us, didn’t he? These jobs. Getting into trouble. Killing monsters. _Helping people_.”

 _“Ja._ ”

She remembered the way his face had lit up when he’d first laid eyes on the periapt now hanging around Caleb’s neck.

_“You know what? I think I’m going to treat myself, I’m going to take it. I feel like I’ve earned something, we’ve had a good run of it, and I have never spent this much money on anything in my life.”_

He’d sounded disbelieving, even giddy at the direction his life had taken. Like fighting spiders in the sewers was the best thing to ever happen to him. She’d considered telling him then that her father had once spent that much on a dress she’d worn once and torn up the next morning. Just to see if she could make him hate her more than he obviously already did.

She was glad she’d managed to keep her mouth shut. Just once.

It felt like a winch was being drawn tighter and tighter around her heart. The memory replayed itself against the inside of her eyelids; Beau felt tears in her eyes and bile in her throat and if _only_ the tavern wasn’t empty but for her and Caleb this late at night because she’d have given anything to expel all this poison with one good punch.

“It’s not about what I’d give to have him back,” she heard herself say. “You know that, right? I’d give literally anything to have him back. I’d give this bag, that chest, my _arm_ \--”

“I know.” She felt a hand resting on her shoulder at the same instant she felt something warm, furry, and purring settle across her legs. “I know.”

“It’s not like I _want_ to put a price on his _life_ , but he did it first, he put the thought in my fucking head—”

“I know.”

“How do you even do that, anyway? How do you just work that out in your head, what to pay for someone’s life? Is it about what they’d have earned for you, or what they had, or just whatever the fuck you feel like because who the _fuck_ even knows?!” Her voice rose and rose until it broke, until it shattered all over again on the rocks of grief, and Beau fisted a hand in her hair just to feel something else, pressed her other hand to her mouth to choke back the sobs roiling in her chest.

Caleb didn’t move, and she was sort of glad for that. Beau just felt Frumpkin hop up into her lap and settle down. When Beau pulled the cat up into her arms to press her face into his furry stomach for a moment instead, he just kept purring.

 “For what it’s worth,” Caleb said, very carefully, when Beau finally set the familiar back down in her lap. “I understand why you are not more upset.”

“Yeah?”

“Money is power. It is not the only form of it, but even so. And Mollymauk, he understood that. More than most, in a way that only those who have been poor can understand that. Money is power, and he was constantly giving his away so that others could have more. Could…be happy.”

Beau found the strength to look up at him then, bolstered perhaps by some fragile note in Caleb’s voice. She saw that he was staring at the wall now and seeing nothing. In the dying embers of the fire, his eyes still shone overbright.

“Nott told me something,” he said, with the ironclad control of one who _knew_ he was about to cry and was having none of it. Beau knew it well. “One morning, after a storm so terrible that a bolt of lightning struck a tree near our camp. It was not long after we left Zadash to do this _verdammter_ job in the first place. Do you remember?”

Beau shrugged. Caleb didn’t even notice and kept talking anyway. “She said she saw him go and leave a silver piece in the broken trunk of that tree. Just left it there. For someone to find and, and have a happy moment in their day. He gained _nothing_ from doing that, he only lost. He had no idea who would come and find that silver piece, or if anyone ever would. But he did it anyway. Like it was nothing.”

Caleb sounded like, throughout all their journey with all the fucked up, fantastical things they’d seen so far, that was somehow the most impossibly awe-inspiring.

Beau could see his point.

“Sounds like him,” she mumbled, running her fingers through Frumpkin’s fur so she wouldn’t be tempted to keep pulling her hair out.

Caleb nodded, just once. Then he turned to look at her with a calm, steady, unflinching gaze, and she found herself pinned beneath the light of his conviction.

“That is why this is good, Beau,” he said, reaching out to tap the bag of platinum pieces again. “This coin, right here, this is food and lodgings and bribes and, and _safety_. This is magic items from Pumat Sol to make us strong and healing potions to—” His voice broke, and he dug the heel of his hand mercilessly into his eye as tears started to fall. Beau said nothing to acknowledge it. She could do that much for him, at least and, after that moment of weakness, Caleb drew in a deep, shuddering breath and carried on.

“This is giving us more coin to spend now so we have more to spend later. Everything we buy with this, _that_ is how we keep him with us. Maybe the Gentleman knew that. I don’t know. I don’t care. What matters is that _we_ know that. And _he_ would know that.”

And he would. Beau knew, somehow, deep in her bones, that this was exactly how Molly would think. Hell, back there at his grave right after…right after they’d first dug it, she’d been prepared to leave everything there with him, it had seemed like the thing you were supposed to do. But it was like she’d heard his voice right in her ear, aghast: _“Are you insane, hurry up and loot me!”_

It had almost been enough to make her laugh in the midst of all that hell.

Almost.

She flinched when she felt Caleb’s hand squeeze her shoulder. Then Beau reached up and squeezed his hand in turn, blinking back a fresh threat of tears.

“You and me,” he murmured, in a voice low and rough with emotion. “We are assholes, _ja_? But that doesn’t mean we are stupid. And that doesn’t mean we don’t care. Even if we care in different ways than some. Sometimes that is what the world needs. Being with you all has taught me that.”

She would not let herself cry. Not now. The time for crying was supposed to be over.

“Caleb?” she said instead.

“ _Was_?”

“I’m glad you’re still here, y’know? To figure shit like that out with me.”

In the shadows of the dying embers, she thought she saw him smile, brief and bright as summer lightning. “Me too.”

Neither of them slept that night. Eventually, Caleb pulled out his book again, and Beau went to coax the fire back into life. Then she sat and petted Frumpkin and let herself get lost in her thoughts until the sky started to get light outside.

After all, it wasn’t like they actually had anywhere to be in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Episode 30 was like trying to drag my soul over broken glass. I'm glad I did so, it was a very good episode, but it also left me raw.
> 
> I don't know why I seized on the detail of that fifty platinum in particular, enough that I was still turning over the idea months later. But there you go. Brains are weird.


	2. My Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entire chapter is basically a thinly veiled homage to the book "Fig Pudding", which I realized recently has provided me my entire framework to contextualize how I think about grief. Mom read it to me when I was like 7, and the "bowl full of sadness" metaphor just stuck with me. 
> 
> Wonder if the author ever knew that, twenty four years later, it'd be used in a story about a D&D podcast?

Weeks later, seeing Molly and Keg walking towards her down the darkened docks hadn’t been _that_ bad. It wasn’t like she’d thought it was really them. Or at least, not for more than the split second it took for her brain to catch up to her heart. And really, that was like no time at all.

When the instant of shock and aborted _joy_ faded, it left a dull, leaden, tight feeling in her chest. That was her problem, of course, and she shut it down the best she could, acknowledging it externally with nothing more than a clipped “fuck you” to Nott as she got to work. The tension of the task before them should have been enough to help her keep that bad moment out of her head, let the bad feelings fade. There were more important things to do.

But that night, she dreamed.

It wasn’t a bad dream. That just made it worse later, but the dream in and of itself wasn’t bad. She was with her friends, and they were all exploring some weird, twisted tomb. There was cool magic in the walls and monsters that were weird and spiky but not too scary, cut down with barely a thought. With Molly by her side, nothing stood a chance. They moved fast and struck true and they were really figuring this teamwork thing out.

It was a quiet dream. She knew that things were being said, in the way you often knew things in dreams. But everyone’s voices had a distant, muffled, silvery quality to them. She watched Molly’s teeth flash in the light as he grinned, watching him throw back his head and laugh at something she said.

And all the while she thought, over and over again, _There’s something I need to tell him._

And then, _I’ll tell him later._

And then she woke up with a strangled gasp and an ache in her chest. She woke with tears in her eyes and the wild thought in her head that did she even really remember what Molly’s voice had sounded like anymore?

Yasha and Jester were too deeply asleep to hear her. She heard Caleb’s pen stop scratching for just a moment. She knew he was giving her the chance to speak up if she had to.

She had to, but she didn’t want to and so she didn’t. Besides, he had more important work to do, and this was just one bad, stressful night. No point in bringing up dreams when the days to come would be so much more dangerous.

She still felt the wild urge to ask him how much his perfect mind recalled about their fallen friend, but she just turned over and tried to get comfortable, and heard Caleb return to his work.

*  *  *

Except it wasn’t the last time she had a dream like that, a happy dream that woke her up feeling miserable. The next time it happened, there wasn’t even a reason. She just woke up one night with a whimpery sort of gasp in her cabin on their new ship.

_She’d had a dream that she and Molly were back in Hupperdook, out on the streets filled with indistinct crowds and flashes of light overhead. They’d been wending and weaving their way through, trying to find the others. He’d been holding her hand so they didn’t get separated._

_“What’s the best lie you ever told?” he’d asked her._

_“I already told you.”_

_“No, you didn’t. And honestly, I think that makes it what’s actually your best lie.”_

_But he hadn’t pressed the point. Maybe he already knew._

My greatest lie was that I hated you, _Beau had wanted to say, but somehow what came out of her mouth was: “You’re going to die, you know.”_

_She’d been wanting to tell him that for so long._

_He’d turned his gaze back to the road ahead. “I know.” He’d simply swung their joined hands together with a childish sort of joy. “So are you. At least we’re having fun while we can, right?”_

_“Yeah. Guess so.” On a wild whim, she’d asked: “Are we friends?”_

_“’Course we are.”_

_“Are you lying?”_

And then she’d woken up before he’d answered, if there was ever going to be an answer to give. She woke up in her hammock and laid there for a long while, with her arm through across her eyes, until the restless energy and helpless rage grew to be too much and she stalked up on deck instead.

At least now she could hit something. This _was_ their boat, after all.

The night was bitterly, bracingly cold, as so many nights at sea seemed to be. It helped jolt her awake, remind her what was real, for better and for worse. As soon as she emerged up from below and took a deep breath of salt-tinged air, Beau’s eyes lit on the main mast and a wild idea occurred to her.

“Y’know,” Caduceus drawled from behind her a few minutes later, when he came across Beau driving her fists into the wood again and again and again until she felt bruises blooming and skin breaking. “We just got that fixed.”

Beau let out an exasperated sigh at having her venting session interrupted, but otherwise felt no surprise to find the firbolg suddenly behind her. It was somehow impossible to be surprised at the way Caduceus just turned up in places and wandered into situations. It was just _how he was_ , and he trailed peace and reassurance behind him like steam curling up from a tea kettle.

Slowly rewrapping her hands, she turned to face her friend. _My new friend_ , she caught herself thinking, even though that wasn’t right. She must have known him at least as long as she’d known Molly by now.

Maybe she’d known him longer.

It was only when she saw Caduceus’ expression grow so _sad_ that Beau realized she’d started crying at the thought. “Hey,” he say, very gently, coming over to her. He rested a hand on his shoulder and tilted his head a little to better look her in the eye. “Hey, what’s wrong?” Before she could even begin to think of how to answer, she felt the familiar shivery cold of healing magic rushing through her, making the bruises fade and the cuts knit.

She’d wanted to feel them a while longer, but that was Caduceus for you. No point in arguing.

“It’s nothing,” she said, wiping her eyes mechanically. “It’s, it’s stupid. Just a bad dream.”

“I mean, we’ve definitely had plenty of cause for that, lately.”

“Yeah? I mean, yeah. And, like, it’d be one thing if it was a bad dream about Avantika, or Daschilla, or weird happy fun balls, but—” Beau drew in a shaky breath and let out a pathetic, hiccupy sort of laugh. “—but it’s not like that. It’s a good dream and that’s what makes it bad. Y’know?”

Caduceus shook his head without hesitation. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.”

And since that seemed to be that, she simply shrugged helplessly and made to brush past him, meaning to head back to her room. She didn’t get very far, however, before Caduceus caught her arm in a grip as gentle as silk but strong as an oak. It was enough to make her stop dead, heart stuttering, blinking stupidly through the tears.

“But I’d like to try to,” he said quietly. “I’d like you to try and explain it to me.” Ever so carefully, she felt his grip shift so instead he was urging her to turn and face him. “I’d like to be strong for you, Beau.”

 _We’ll comfort them, feed them, be strong for them_ , Caduceus had said, and Beau had liked the sound of that. But it seemed as if she couldn’t even go a couple of days without fucking up her place in the world.

Even so, there was something in his voice that promised understanding, answers, and _relief_. She would have suspected he’d just used magic on her to wear down her refusal if she didn’t know by now that Caduceus was just _like that_. Besides, he’d grown up in a graveyard. Maybe he could understand why this _rot_ had taken a deeper root in her heart than she’d ever feared.

So Beau turned to face him, sniffling and trying to get herself under control. She let him guide her back to the mast, where at first she leaned against it and then she gave up and slid down into a sitting position instead. Caduceus sat down beside her and, even if she did not give into the urge to lean against him, having his warmth beside her was still nice.

“I’ve been thinking about Molly,” she said at last. “Not, uh, not a lot, but I keep thinking about him.”

“What have you been thinking about?”

“Take your pick. How he lived. How he died. Everything I should have done or said when I had the chance. Whether I even really remember what he looks like anymore. Or his voice.” Her own voice wavered traitorously again. She tried to swallow it down.

She couldn’t bring herself to look at Caduceus either, but she felt the weight of his consideration. “Why are you thinking about how he died?” he finally asked her, and she supposed that made sense as a way to start. The Iron Shepherds were dead, torn to pieces and turned to ashes in a night by the hands of those they’d left wounded and grieving. Shady Creek Run and Glory Run Road were about as far away from her now as anything could be. So why should that moment, that death, still be weighing on her?

She knew exactly why, but she didn’t want to say it.

She made herself say it anyway. It was time for her to stop being a coward. It was time for at least one of her friends to understand, and who better to do so than the one who already knew her least?

“I froze.”

Two little words and speaking them still somehow felt like being stabbed in the throat. And Caduceus _of course_ gave no response, just sat back and blinked in that gentle, mild way he had. But Beau saw his fingers tightening around his staff – he knew that what she’d just said was significant even if he couldn’t have begun to understand how much.

“What do you mean?” he finally asked, so very quietly.

Breathing hurt, but if she didn’t focus on breathing she’d start crying instead. Even so, her voice wavered traitorously and her eyes stung. “Back then. Back when we were first trying to save the others. Caleb and Nott, they don’t know this part. I don’t think. Nott was trying to get the cages open and, and Caleb was hanging back. Keg probably saw but fuck it, she froze too.”

Breathing hurt like a wound in her chest, and that thought undid her entirely and her breathing became _sobs_. _This is probably what he felt_ , she thought wildly, pressing the heel of her hand against one eye until she saw stars. _This pain, it was the last thing he felt._

Caduceus reached out to rest a big, warm hand on her shoulder and she reached up and _clung_ to it even if she did not deserve the comfort, even if he would soon see that. She still needed it to get through this at all. _Someone_ should know.

“But I was close. I was just, I was hiding between the horses like an idiot while their guards took fucking potshots at me. And I was there. I saw him go down. And I could have…I could have done _something_. Jumped on that _fucker_ Lorenzo’s back or, or gotten in the way, or _something_ and maybe he’d still be here.”

She couldn’t make out Caduceus’ expression anymore through the tears, but she felt his gaze on her face all the same – calm, quiet, steady.

“Why didn’t you?” he asked.

“Because I’m _pathetic_ ,” she answered without hesitation.

He made a terribly soft sound of disapproval. “I don’t think that’s all there is to it. And I think you’re scared to admit that’s not all there is to it. But you have to, or this is just going to keep poisoning you.”

No, no, no. She didn’t want to, it shouldn’t _matter_ , and yet at his gentle insistence the words came anyway.

“I was going to. I swear, I _swear_ I was going to, but, but he looked at me. Molly was on the ground and bleeding and he _looked_ at me and I thought…it was like he was telling me ‘no’.” The next sob tore through her, bad enough to make her double over and curl in on herself and wrap her arms around her stomach in a vain attempt to hold her useless guts in. Dimly, as if it was happening to a stranger or ten miles away, she felt Caduceus lay a hand on her back and slowly draw her closer. She was powerless to resist and wound up slumped against his chest as she wept for the first time in months.

God. Molly had been gone for months.

“He was alone and he must have known he was going to die and he _fucking told me_ _no_ _and_ _I listened._ What kind of person _does that?”_ She didn’t know if she meant Molly or herself. Probably both.

Caduceus sighed, and she felt it as a rustling in her hair and a rumbling against her ear. “I think the kind of person who does that is the kind of person who wants to take their last moments to try and protect a friend. And the kind of person who listens is the kind of person who wants to honor that.”

Beau shook her head. Somehow, the very idea of what he was saying wouldn’t fit in her head. She didn’t want it to. “And the thing is, he didn’t even keep looking at me. I wish he had. I keep thinking I wish _I’d_ been the last thing he saw. How selfish is that? It’s not like we were ever even really friends. I always gave him so much shit. But we were getting there. Maybe. I think.”

She choked, pressing a hand over her mouth as she thought of them sharing a horse together without so much as a smart remark, as she thought of waking up on the floor of that moldy old dungeon to find him offering her a hand up, as she remembered the two of them flipping cards and Molly coming up low. But it had all come to nothing, and: “But he looked away. He looked right at that bastard. _That_ was the last thing he saw.”

Of course there was never a good way to die. But somehow, that struck her as one of the worst.

“I understand why you think that way,” Caduceus said, after a long and quiet moment. “Can I tell you why you’re wrong?”

She shrugged miserably. “Fuck it. Give it a shot.”

“Okay.” Caduceus, damn him, only held her tighter, holding her with a tenderness she did not and had never deserved. “You can’t know that you could have done something. Maybe if you had tried, you would have died instead, or you would have died with him, and everyone else would have to carry on without you, too. I’m sure that moment seems like it lasted a lot longer than it did, Beau. Shock and trauma and fear, they do something to your mind to make it all seem like it lasted so much longer. But from what I _have_ been told of that day, it was over in a second. You can look back on it now and remember, but at the time, I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t even realize what was happening until it was done.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Because right now, all she could think about was that having Molly here and feeling this guilt instead of her didn’t seem like such a bad trade.

“No. Because I think right now, your heart is set on feeling this way, and that’s okay.” He tapped her lightly on the forehead. “But I just want to put these words in here for you to think about later. Sometimes things happen that we can’t control. Sometimes lives are lost that we can’t save. Storms, sickness, violence from the most unexpected places and people. Sometimes things happen that we just can’t control, and all we can do is the best we can do, to carry on in the face of it. That is how we honor the ones who get left behind. If you try to take the weight of every lost friend and every bad thing on yourself, Beau, then it will crush you. Do you think your friend would want that?”

“…no.”

She remembered him slapping Caleb out of a daze, kissing him to make up for it, and then leading him away from the ruined remains of the gnoll priest. _Back in the game. Time for that later_. No, Mollymauk Tealeaf had never been one to sit and wallow.

And if he could see her now, maybe he would really be telling her to do something else with her time.

Beau had a feeing it would still take some time for the advice to sink in, for her to understand and internalize the full weight of Caduceus was telling her. But it held the promise of feeling better, and that counted for something there and then.

And it seemed he wasn’t done. “As for if you’re remembering him exactly as he was…well, you probably aren’t. And that’s okay. I think about that a lot, wondering if I really remember my mother’s smile, or my sister’s voice.”

“But at least you’ll get to find out if you’re right,” she mumbled. Gods, she hoped so. She hoped Caduceus’ family was all right. Of all the people to deserve a happy ending, he was one of them.

“And Melora willing, it will be soon,” he said, and she could hear the longing in his voice that he was trying not to acknowledge. “But even if we are reunited at the end of our quest, there will come a time when one of us – maybe my mother, maybe me – will be the first of our family to have a grave of their own. And the ones left behind will have to carry on with our memory. And even though they do, there will come a time when they forget our face, our voice, our smile, forever. And that’s okay.”

“Yeah?” It didn’t sound okay, it sounded impossible lonely and cruel. But she felt Caduceus nod, before he tucked her properly into his arms to rest his chin on the top of her head, as if he meant to shield her from all the bad things in the world. It was a good feeling, and she felt herself relaxing at last. She didn’t realize until then that she might have forgotten how.

“Yeah,” he said. “Because I’ll remember the way it made me feel to be with them. I’ll remember the things they taught me and the good they inspired me to do. And it sounds like you remember that about him, too. People aren’t how they look or how they sound, Beau. They’re what they do for others, the connections they make, and the impact they have on another’s life.”

 _I left every town better than I found it_ , Molly had said, with the most utter conviction and sincerity she’d ever heard from him. Beau still hadn’t understood the true weight of those words until it was too late. But now she was resolved to do the same, and fill in the gap he’d left behind by doing all the good he would never get a chance to.

So maybe that was how she would hold on to him, even when her imperfect memory finally, truly failed her. She could hold on to him, not just in the meals and rest that fifty platinum had secured for her, but in the guiding force she carried within her heart as close and safe as she kept the words of Expositor Dairon.

Fuck the system. Do some good. She didn’t see how those couldn’t work well together. She didn’t see how she couldn’t work with that.

Beau wiped at her eyes again, and was dully surprised when her vision remained clear. She realized as well that her heart was no longer beating hard enough to hurt. “You sounded pretty smart just now,” she said, pulling away enough to stare up at Caduceus.

“Well, thank you,” he said, and of course he sounded simply pleased rather than indignant at the faintly disbelieving note in her voice.

“I guess it kinda makes sense, though. I mean, if you grew up in a graveyard, you’ve gotta know how to talk to grieving people, right?”

“Yeah.” With no words being said, he helped her stand and she let herself be helped, and didn’t protest when he started to walk her back towards the stairs below deck once more. “But I didn’t always know how. You know? It’s not like I was born knowing. The first time I saw something die, it hurt. The first time I saw something die that I knew…it hurt even worse.”

“So what did you do?” Beau asked, fascinated despite herself. “How’d it get easier?”

“It’s something my mother said to me. Something that made it all start to make sense.” Caduceus gestured vaguely in the air. “She told me that sadness is like a bowl of…something. I don’t remember exactly what she said. But it’s hot. And you can’t get up from the table until you eat it all.”

“Caduceus?”

“Yeah?”

“That makes _literally_ no sense.”

“It didn’t to me either.” He sounded quite pleased about their shared ignorance. “I mean, not at first. But think about it. Didn’t your parents ever tell you that you couldn’t get up and go play until you finished dinner, even when you didn’t really want to eat?”

“Something like that.” Her father had never put it quite so kindly.

They reached the bottom of the stairs and she realized he was steering her towards the kitchen. “So this thing, this bowl of sadness. It’s too hot and it tastes terrible. But you have to eat it, or you can’t get up. You can’t move on. So some people, they eat it all at once. Get it over with. And some people take little bites at a time. And some people, well, they wait until it cools off before they get started. But one way or another, you’ve gotta eat it. And I think you’re finally starting to dig in, Beau.”

It was maybe a little terrifying how much sense he made when he put it like that. Except: “You didn’t see me right after it happened. Trust me, I dug right the fuck in right away.”

He hummed softly, thoughtfully. “I wasn’t there, but from what I have been told, I’m not sure you did. I think you were angry. I don’t doubt that you were so, so angry. And I think you had to be, given your situation. But anger’s not the same as grieving, Beau. Anger is something you can point at people. Grief…grief is all your own.”

The kitchen was empty when they entered. Caduceus sat her down at the table, and Beau felt all the weariness of the night settle like a physical weight on her shoulders. She was suddenly so tired in a way she hadn’t let herself notice before, and stifled a yawn as Caduceus went to light a lamp.

“So here’s what we’re going to do, you and me,” he said, as the light cast a warm, gentle glow onto his face. It was somehow, strangely mesmerizing. “I think you’ve had enough of feeling for tonight, so I’m gonna make you something that’ll let you go back to sleep. But the next time you start feeling this way, the next time you have a bad good dream, you’re gonna come find me, okay? And we’ll sit, and we’ll talk about your friend, and you’ll take another few bites out of that bowl, Beau. And you’re going to make it through this.”

When he put it like that, she found that she could really start to believe him.

When he put it like that, the idea really didn’t seem like such a bad thing. It didn’t feel like a disservice or a dishonor to Molly. She could almost imagine him rolling his eyes and clucking his tongue at her and saying _well, obviously_ in the most exasperated possible voice.

This time, she let herself smile.

“Can we talk now?” she asked, hesitant and hopeful. “I mean…it feels like all you’ve ever heard about Molly is how awful it was when he died. Have we even told you any of the _fun_ stuff?”

He gave the question all due consideration. “Well, there was that time Jester talked about…ah…” He trailed away, scratching his nose and averting his gaze. His cheeks had gone as pink as his hair, and she couldn’t help but laugh.

“Nah, that doesn’t count,” she said. “Come on, lemme tell you about this time we fought a giant.”

“That sounds nice,” Caduceus said, beaming in relief, before he turned to put the kettle on.


	3. I Am Here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We started this fic with Taliesin's thoughts on Molly's death, and ended it with Marisha's thoughts on it. 
> 
> Somehow, that seems poetic. It certainly inspired this chapter. "Where does everybody go when they go, let me ask you" indeed...

The coat was gone the next time their paths took them north along Glory Run Road.

Beau could feel everyone holding their breath as they approached, could feel everyone waiting to see that splash of brilliant color against the green summer grasses dotting the otherwise barren landscape. Everyone was waiting for the chance to see Molly again – or at least, to see all that was truly left of him.

She could feel the leaden realization sinking in one by one, last of all with her, that there was nothing left to see.

But that wasn’t quite right. Jester was the first to notice what else had changed, pointing it out with a gasp and urging Fjord to stop the cart. She didn’t even wait for him to do so, hopping down and racing over before the wheels had stopped turning, calling for the others to come and see. One by one, first with Yasha and last with Beau, they did so.

“Well!” said Caduceus, beaming proudly, surveying the results of his work like a doting parent. “Isn’t that something?”

The sapling was small, not even half as tall as the long stick that had been left behind as a remaining grave marker. Someone had tied the former to the latter to give it support through the winter winds and spring storms. It was new and it was real and it was growing from the dirt where Mollymauk Tealeaf had been buried.

Already, its bark was a deep brown with royal purple undertones and veins running through it. Those few leaves that it had sprouted already were blood red.

“It’s lovely,” Yasha breathed, reaching out to run her fingers tenderly over a couple of the leaves. Her face was alight with a warm, soft smile.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Nott added, glancing up at Caduceus. “Have you, Mr. Clay?”

Caduceus shook his head. Fjord snorted in amusement. “I mean, that’s Molly for ya.” 

“You made the earth remember him, Caduceus,” Jester whispered, beaming fit to burst as she looked the tree over and then looked up at the other cleric. “Just like you said you would. Thank you.”

“I guess I did!” Caduceus sounded quite pleased with himself, kneeling down beside them all to examine the tree himself. With a murmured apology to it, he reached out, plucked a leaf from its new branches, and held it up to examine critically. “This isn’t just me, though. This little fella’s come pretty far along. A lot more than I would have expected. I think someone’s been taking care of it.”

“This place is pretty far from anything,” Caleb murmured, glancing anxiously up and down the road. “Who would be around to do that?” Just from the tone of his voice, Beau could tell he’d seized on the most logical, least emotional and upsetting detail in this whole affair. Perhaps, like her, now that they were closer to the grave he had also noticed what else there was to see, and like her he was also struggling to know what to make of it. She understood intimately, and was glad to know she wasn’t the only one. Even moving felt like an effort right now, but she managed to reach down and take his hand in hers’. His gaze slid to her and he smiled weakly in relief, a smile she returned.

And while they’d had their moment, Yasha found their answer. They first heard it as a soft intake of breath that nevertheless drew all eyes back to her. She was staring in wonder at glittering… _something_ that had been wrapped around a branch.

“Caleb? Nott? Someone?” she asked, sounding suddenly about to cry. “Can you…I mean, do you…I don’t understand. Please explain this to me. I don’t understand.”

Nott scurried over to peer at Yasha’s discovery, and even Caleb was finally able to come and join them kneeling in the dirt. Beau heard them both gasp as well, saw them exchange a look, and was able to make herself join the others crowding them as well. Peering over Jester’s head, she saw it, too, and understood why Yasha had been so confused.

Someone had wrapped a delicate chain around a branch, jewelry of the sort that might dangle from a tiefling’s horn, adorned with a simple, tarnished charm of a crescent moon.

“Back, ah, back when you were all first taken,” she heard Caleb saying, stumbling and stammering. He reached out to touch the chain, but made no move to unwrap it. He clearly knew, just as they all did, in the way you knew the very nature of right and wrong, that it should not be removed from where it had been placed. “When we were trying to chase you down. We spent a night resting with Nila’s people, or at least what was left of them at the time. Myself and Nott and Beau and, and Keg, and…and Mollymauk. We never saw most of them, just an old woman caring for a young boy who’s parents had been lost. But they fed us, and they let us rest. And in the morning, before we set out, Molly and I we…hah.” He smiled, old and tired and  warm. “We tried to make the boy smile, him and me. It wasn’t anything we both decided to do, it was just something we found ourselves doing. I made Frumpkin dance on his head, and he…he tried to do a card trick, switching out the card for this trinket.”

“He fucked it up,” Nott whispered, smiling through her tears.

Caleb laughed, and it broke on a sob. “He fucked it up,” he agreed. “But he laughed it off, and he gave the boy this before we went on our way. And…and I think Nila and her people have been taking care of this tree. Maybe her and her son, maybe that boy and his grandmother. Maybe all of them, I don’t know.”

“It’s not that far from there to here,” Beau added quietly. “Especially if you can turn into a bird or something. And they were, like, druids, right? They’d probably know how to make a tree grow up fast, wouldn’t they?”

“Fast and strong,” Caduceus agreed happily. “They sure would.”

“Do you think they left all this other stuff behind, too?” Jester asked, pointing out what else had changed about the grave. Beau hadn’t realized that she’d noticed it all, too.

The others definitely hadn’t, had been too overwhelmed by the loss of the coat and the gain of the tree. But they looked around where Jester indicated, to see the other trinkets and offering that had been left behind, scattered around the grave – too small to be noticed at a distance, comparatively nothing against the tree, but inescapable now, and painting a more and more impossible picture.

There were broken pieces of ceramic and scraps of cloth to serve as dishes. And on those dishes were scattered copper pieces, even the occasional silver. There were pieces of dried fruit or salted beef or hardtack bread. There was even a waterskin and, when Beau cautiously picked it up and swished it around, she found it full. There was a pair of socks, a tattered pair of gloves, all left behind here on the side of the road around the grave of Mollymauk Tealeaf.

“I don’t understand,” Beau whispered, setting the waterskin reverentially back down in the dirt. “People just _left_ all this here? This is the frontier, this is the ass end of nowhlere, Shady Creek Run is like _right there_. People don’t do this. People around here _definitely_ don’t do this.” They didn’t leave money and food and water and warm clothes behind just on the optimistic hope that someone would come along who needed it. People who had stolen a coat off a grave wouldn’t do that, would they?

“I think I do,” said Caduceus, sounding faintly surprised with himself.

“So enlighten us.”

“Okay. I mean, this is only my best guess, but…I think it makes some things make sense. And maybe you all will agree.”

Jester and Nott immediately sat down before Caduceus, looking like children awaiting a bedtime story. Fjord chuckled lightly and settled down on Jester’s other side. Yasha sat down next to Nott. Beau stayed standing, finding it hard to move again. Caleb stood with her, holding her hand.

“So just think about it,” Caduceus said, staring fondly at the tree. “Imagine you’re someone walking down this road. And maybe you get caught in a storm, or maybe it’s just a lot colder than you thought it’d be. Maybe you didn’t even mean to be making this journey in the first place, but now you’re not even sure if you’ll make it to wherever you’re going. But then you come across a coat on the side of the road. A nice coat, from what you all have told me.”

“A very nice coat,” Nott agreed.

Beau could almost see it. Maybe it was someone who had heard about all the slaves being freed from the Sour Nest and had come to find someone they’d lost. She’d never known where Shakaste had taken them to rest, after all, before presumably getting to work getting them all home. Maybe it had been a mother who’d finally had a hope of finding her missing child and had set off in haste, unprepared for what the weather this far north would bring. And just when she thought she’d freeze to death at the finish line, she’d found a warm coat like a gift from the gods.

“Of course, whoever took the coat must have known this was a grave,” Caduceus carried on. “You all made it very obvious. So maybe they left something behind, to appease whatever spirit they thought might still dwell here. A bit of coin, a bit of food. Whatever they had that wasn’t doing anything to help them through the cold.”

“Oh!” Jester gasped, comprehension dawning. “So the next person to come along the road finds that coin or that food waiting for them! And they leave something, too! Just in case.”

“Not the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard of,” Fjord said, glancing around the makeshift space again. “Sailors are a suspicious bunch. Have to imagine that most merchants are the same, especially out here. Anything you can do for a bit of extra luck, you’ll do it. Don’t fuck with ghosts if you don’t have to.”

The Mighty Nein all shared a solemn nod at this. Those times when they’d had to fuck with ghosts had been unpleasant, to say the least.

“Leave something behind for those who need it,” Yasha murmured, reaching out to caress the tree once more. “Because soon it might be you.”

And so, bit by bit as the months went by, as winter turned to spring and then to summer, word had spread amongst those who walked the roads for a living, and leaving a little something you could spare on the side of Glory Run Road where the twin hills rose had just become a thing you did because everyone else did it.

Bit by bit, this grave had become a _shrine_.

Beau was grateful for Jester to drawing all eyes back to her while she just tried to _deal with that_ revelation. The girl leaped to her feet and went digging around in her pack. “Everyone! We should all leave something here, too! Molly would want us to!”

Fjord smiled fondly at the memory of his old roommate as he moved to do the same. “Yeah, he would.”

So the Mighty Nein all left their own treasures on the pile for some other lucky soul to come by and find later and, as Caleb had once put it, have a happy moment in their day. They left scattered silver and a few pieces of gold, they left bandages and food and a vial of acid and a sketch of hamster-sized unicorns. Jester even stuck her hand in the bag of holding up to her elbow, pulled out some lightly used leather armor they’d stolen off some gnolls who wouldn’t be needing it anymore, and left it there as well. Even if the next person to pass by didn’t need the armor, they might need the coin it would bring selling it off.

Caleb knelt down before the sapling and murmured something low and fast in Zemnian that might have been a prayer. Nott went to stand with him. Beau watched him for a long moment, and so she saw it when a stray breeze drifted by and made a few delicate branches wave and sway. 

 _When someone dies in my clan, we know that their spirit never leaves._ Nila's words came back to her like a song on the wind. _It just gets returned to nature, which is why we protect nature so fiercely. I have lost people before. I find ways to see them in nature. Sometimes the leaves on the trees– I pick one leaf and I know that it is a spirit waving to me. Your friend is here. He has not left._

Her heart felt suddenly too full for words, and yet she had to put words to the idea building up inside of her, she had to at least _try._ So Beau looked at Jester. Her friend was currently combing the ground, looking for rocks to weigh her sketch down.

“Hey, Jes?”

“Yeah?”

“Where do gods come from?”

Jester froze, her hand halfway to a stray stone. Then she sat down heavily with an exhaled breath, and tilted her head back to squint thoughtfully at the sky.

“I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “I guess I never asked. I always kind of thought they were around forever, y’know?”

Beau sat down beside her, and also found herself staring at the sky. “They’ve definitely been around for a long fucking time. And maybe they were around before there were people. But…I read this book, once, at the Cobalt Soul. It was super rare, one of the only copies left, because the guy who wrote it got torn apart by a mob. For saying that maybe the gods get their powers from us. Because we believe they’re strong, they become strong. And that by banning the worship of certain gods, the Empire is actually trying to weaken them, or even kill them.”

Jester laughed, high and clear as a bell. “Don’t be silly, Beau! The Traveler is _really_ strong, and he’s not allowed to be worshipped!”

“I mean, yeah.” Beau leaned over to elbow her friend in the ribs. “He’s got you.” Taking heart in the way Jester blushed the deepest shade of sapphire blue in pleasure, Beau added: “I’m just sayin’, maybe gods have to start somewhere.”

“Yeah.” Leaning her head on Beau’s shoulder, Jester looked around in turn, something newly appraising in her gaze. Beau felt a thrill to realize that it was the look of a cleric sizing up potential competition. “Maybe they do. And maybe it could be here.”

Beau wrapped an arm around Jester’s shoulders and leaned against her in turn, smiling. “That’d be cool.”

“That’d be really cool.”

“And I mean, even the gods we have – they look after really big things, like sun and light and life and really good pranks. They’d be glad to have another god around the place who just, like, looked after this road. Y’think?”

“Definitely! That totally makes sense.”

“I mean, I don’t know if that’s actually how it works—”

Jester reached over and tapped her nose, gently chiding. “But you don’t know that’s _not_ how it works, either!”

Beau laughed, and there was something wet in her voice, a threat of tears in her eyes. But neither things were painful this time. “Guess not. And that’d be just like him, wouldn’t it? Goes and gets his ass killed on the side of the road, winds up becoming the god of that road. Maybe all roads. Who knows?”

“Yeah, that sounds like Molly.” Beau heard the smile in Jester’s voice, the peace and contentment there, and wondered if the other woman had finally found it in her to set down a familiar burden, too. If Jester had finally come to the end of a bowl. “Hey, we should have a picnic here the next time we come to visit.”

“Hell yeah we should.”

“I bet this tree will be _really_ big by then. Maybe it’ll even have fruit!”

“Jester?”

“Yeah?”

“When I die and go to wherever the fuck it is that I’m going, I don’t want to have to look the angels or the devils or Molly or whoever in their ghost eyes and tell them that I ate Molly’s fruit.”

Jester burst out laughing hard enough to get the attention of all their friends and quite possibly scare some birds out of the trees back in the Crispvale Thicket. Beau waited patiently until she got her breath back, and as she did so, she caught herself looking the tree over as well. It really was like nothing she’d ever seen before. And it had grown from the bones and blood of the man who had made her better – who had perhaps, even in death, made a safe place in the frontier to make others better as well.

That counted for something. That was surely worth a coat.

“But I guess if it did,” she mused. “It would give you just, like. The _best_ high.”

“Of your _life_ ,” Jester agreed immediately.

“So I think I’d want to give that a try.” Raising her voice to address her friends with their equally confused and fond expressions, Beau asked: “What do you guys think? We should swing back by here in a year or so. If we’re all still alive by then.”

Somehow, it was Yasha who spoke for all of them. Somehow, that seemed appropriate.

“I think that would be very nice,” she said, looking up from where she was tying a scrap of paper to a branch. Smiling down at it, she said: “I think that would be good for all of us.”

But because life went on and so did business, eventually the Mighty Nein started to pick themselves up from the dirt and regather what they meant to take with them and make their way back to the cart to carry on. Before she got up into the cart, Beau turned to look back at the grave of Mollymauk Tealeaf. She looked at the tree growing sturdy and strong, she looked at the offerings from who knew how many merchants and travelers and thieves and lost souls. And she finally, finally let herself put the name of “peace” to the feeling in her chest.

The rush of sheer, euphoric freedom she felt in doing so emboldened her to cup her hands around her mouth and call back the way they’d come: “Long may he reign!”

 _“Long may he reign!”_ cried the other Mighty Nein.

Then they carried on down the road and left the maybe-god of Glory Run Road to resume his work.

**Author's Note:**

> Episode 30 was like trying to drag my soul over broken glass. I'm glad I did so, it was a very good episode, but it also left me raw.
> 
> I don't know why I seized on the detail of that fifty platinum in particular, enough that I was still turning over the idea months later. But there you go. Brains are weird.


End file.
